Comparing Hydrodynamic Models with Observations of Type II Plateau Supernovae

In this Thesis I developed a one-dimensional Lagrangian hydrodynamic code with flux-limited radiation diffusion including gamma-ray transfer in gray approximation for any given distribution of 56Ni. The code was used to model bolometric light curves of Type II Plateau supernovae (SNe II-P). Using the models I performed a consistent comparison with our own large dataset of highly precise, well-sampled BVI light curves and spectra of SNe II-P. I studied observational and physical properties of our set of SNe II-P and I analyzed the correlations between different observed and physical parameters with the aim of characterizing the explosion and progenitor properties of such events.